


Tagelied

by Saathi1013



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angels are Dicks, F/F, First Time, POV Female Character, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-26
Updated: 2011-08-26
Packaged: 2017-11-07 18:23:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/434028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saathi1013/pseuds/Saathi1013
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An AU (that still somehow conforms to canon, kind of) about how Ellen got into the hunting business.</p>
<p>[Done for the Female_Fest2011 challenge, the prompt was "Supernatural, Mary & or / Ellen, young hunters," by/for BlackCatBone.  Originally posted at that comm.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tagelied

**Author's Note:**

  * For [blackcatbone](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=blackcatbone).



> Beta'd by the ever-patient Phaelsafe.

Sometimes when she's tired, the armor slips, the steel in her eyes softens, and the edge in her voice gets blunted. Then, they ask. As if their money has bought her conversation as well as her whiskey.   
  
“So how'd a gal like you get into huntin'?” they ask, all smiles, pretending it's not a worn-out line coming from crooked teeth and a scarred mouth.   
  
Before Bill died, she'd have laughed and said with a wry smile, “Fell for the wrong man, I guess.”    
  
She'd never said it after it had turned out to be true. Tending bar, she fixes inquisitive customers with a flat stare and replies, “How does _anybody_  get into it?” They've heard the stories, know about the man Harvelle's is named after, and they've seen the shotgun on the back shelf.   
  
They don't ever ask twice.   
  
Only two living souls besides herself know the story: Bobby and Jo. Jo was twelve and deserved to know how her parents met, even though Ellen needed to edit the story halfway through. Ellen knew better than to describe the salt lines and the runes in blood and the hunting high that had led to awkward, desperate sex in the cab of Bill's truck. But their first meeting was tame enough to tell.   
  
For his part, Bobby had pounded on the locked door of Harvelle's the one night Ellen kept it closed. She’d been pouring booze like the place was open for business, yet she was drinking alone. “What the hell are you doin'?” Bobby had asked with gruff disbelief when she'd finally answered the door to quiet his racket. “Where's Jo?”   
  
“I'm drinking and Jo's hunting. Bar's closed.” Ellen had faced Bobby down with as much dignity as she could muster while using the doorframe as a crutch, pushing her uncombed hair out of her face. As she did so, she belatedly realized that she hadn’t changed that morning, not since she’d woken up, gone to make coffee, and then spotted the calendar by the sink.   
  
One of Bill's old threadbare tees and a pair of flannel pajama pants must not have been a reassuring sight, because Bobby had shoved past her, closed the door and bolted it behind them, saying, “Well, pour me one, too. I don't have to worry about you if you're drinking with company.” And then, over tequila and vodka and bourbon and whatever else came first to her still-steady hands, she told Bobby.   
  
“Twenty years ago today, I was on a road trip after graduating high school. Seeing the country, getting' a taste of the open road, all those stupid-teenager cliches. Met a hunter at a diner who asked for a ride, and pfft. That was it. Didn't know it at the time, but that was  _it_ ...”   
  
What she does not tell is the other story that begins the same way.   
  
To be fair, she doesn't remember it.   
  
*****   
  
The diner is small and interchangeable with any other she's seen in the last few weeks, with red-checked tablecloths. The counter looks like it had been put down in the forties, its pattern wiped away to white by decades of routine cleaning. Still, it's bright and well-kept, and its bathrooms aren't too cramped, so she can pull out her shampoo and washcloth and get the worst of the grime off without knocking her elbows against the walls. When she's done, she scrapes her damp hair back into a ponytail and heads out to grab a table.   
  
She's staring at the menu, doing math in her head to see if she can afford a cheeseburger with fries or if that would eat into her gas budget. Then a voice cuts through the general murmur of the lunch crowd, bright and girlish and false. “-no, thanks, I'm here with a friend.”   
  
And the owner of that voice slides onto the bench seat across from Ellen, easy as you please. Ellen glances around, spotting a trucker slinking off to a counter seat; he’s shooting a scowl at them over his shoulder. “Uh, hi,” she says, turning back to the strange girl with a puzzled smile. “Glad you could make it?”   
  
The stranger is blonde and tan and athletically trim, and her smile is bright and wide. “Sorry about that. My name's Mary Campbell, and you just saved my ass. So let me buy you lunch.”   
  
Ellen grins back. “Now I  _am_  glad you could make it, Mary. I'm Ellen. Pleased to meet ya.”   
  
***   
  
“So are you a local?” Mary asks her, stealing a french fry. She has a silver charm bracelet on one wrist that jingles every time she moves her arm.   
  
“Nope,” Ellen admits, finishing her Coke. “Road trip before college. Supposed to see Grandma, but I'm taking the scenic route. I'm guessing you're not local either, or you'd know, small town like this.”   
  
“Good guess. Parents and I were on vacation. Had a fight half a state back, and I stormed out of the hotel. Now I'm hitching rides towards a friend's place. Plan to lie low 'till we all cool down.”   
  
Ellen winces sympathetically. “Damn, sorry to hear that. Which way are you going? I've got space if you've got gas money.”   
  
“Chicago?”   
  
Ellen thinks about it for a minute. She'll have to turn back east eventually anyway, get to Smith before the school year starts.  _What the hell,_  she thinks,  _California will still be there next summer._  And 'visiting Grandma' was only ever an excuse to keep her mother from worrying. “I think I can manage that,” she says.    
  
Mary gives her another brilliant grin and throws down money for their food. “We should go. That guy looks like he's gearing up for another try.”   
  
***   
  
“Shit,” Mary says appreciatively, falling over the door into the passenger seat in a controlled sprawl. She ends up with her legs crossed at the ankle, her booted feet on the sill. Her knapsack slides off her lap into the footwell with a thump. “If I'd have known you had such a sweet ride, I wouldn't have cared where you were headed.”   
  
Ellen preens a little as she settles behind the wheel of the cherry-red convertible. “Worked my ass off through high school at the local library,” she says. “Saving up for college. But then I saw her in a used-car lot just after graduation and thought, what the hell, you know? I'll have to keep working to pay for the last year of tuition, but this gal was totally worth it.”   
  
“I'll say,” Mary replies, reaching out one fine-boned hand to stroke the dash. Her nails are clean and short, but the knuckles look bruised. Ellen wonders how many insistent truckers Mary's had to fend off since striking out on her own. “I'm a little jealous.”   
  
The motor starts up with an appreciative rumble, as if the Corvair heard every word.   
  
***   
  
There's something about sharing a car on a bright, clear, sunny day with another girl around her age, their parents far away, and nothing but possibility in the wind that twists and spins their hair into pennants. If Mary were a guy, Ellen might have reluctantly given him a ride to the next bus station and driven silently, her hands clutching at the wheel while occasionally checking that her folding knife is close at hand in her pocket. Instead, Mary's easy, relaxed presence makes her want to talk, open up.   
  
Ellen tells her about where she comes from, the small town in Missouri whose name no one recognizes; about her family, proud but puzzled by her insistence on going to a college in a different state. She talks about the library where she worked, its children's section full of old fairy and folk tales that probably shouldn't be shelved there, all gruesome endings and just desserts for the wicked.   
  
“That's why I want to study anthropology,” she says. “I fell in love with those old stories. I find it interesting what they say about people. They told these stories to kids back when there really  _were_  wolves in the woods waiting to eat unwary girls that were walking alone to Grandma's house.”   
  
“So you believe in those kinds of stories?” Mary asks, shooting a sidelong look her way. Not mocking, which is a relief, but...  _challenging._   
  
“Maybe,” Ellen admits. “All stories have to come somewhere, even if they get distorted in the retelling over the years.”   
  
“What about ghosts and stuff?”   
  
Ellen glances over again. “There was an old house in our neighborhood, its doors all boarded up. It had been abandoned for years, with peeling paint and broken windows like scraggly teeth in open mouths. Everyone said it was haunted, of course. All the kids would dare each other to spend a night in there...”   
  
“Did you ever?” Mary asks.   
  
Ellen laughs ruefully. “Nope, never got up the nerve. There was a story about a couple of boys who'd done it once. One disappeared and the other went mute, never talked again. When I worked at the library, I looked it up in the old papers. Never happened.”   
  
Next to her, Mary seems to slump down into her seat, disappointed. “What about you?” Ellen asks. “Ever see a ghost?”   
  
Mary laughs. “You wouldn't believe me if I told you.”   
  
“Try me,” Ellen replies, interest piqued.   
  
“Take this exit,” Mary says. “We need gas and it's getting late.”   
  
Sure enough, the needle's almost on empty and Ellen never even noticed.   
  
***   
  
They get a room at a motel just off the main road and look for someplace to eat. There are three blocks of buildings trying to pass for “town;” half of the storefronts stand empty and even the local mom-and-pop restaurant is closed for the night. The only cars to be seen at this hour are clustered around a bar at one end of the strip, its windows the only ones still lit.   
  
“Oh, good,” Mary says. “Looks like the bank's open.”   
  
“What?” Ellen says, trailing after her. Mary skips ahead, her wide smile a beacon in the night. There's no call at the door for their IDs; they’re two young, single women and Mary’s showing miles of leg between her scuffed boots and cutoff jean shorts.   
  
Ellen gets her answer pretty quick, Mary leaving her at a table. Mary’s got a set of worn, steel-tipped darts in one hand as she strolls over to the boards. Men buy them a steady supply of drinks, and Ellen tries not to fidget under their appraisal while Mary seems to bask in their attention, deflecting their wits away from the board and quietly pocketing a growing stack of bills.   
  
When there's a lull in the stream of willing marks, Mary takes Ellen's hand and pulls her up to the line, showing her how to stand with gentle tugs at her belt loops. She shows Ellen how to sight the dart, pull back and release, and add an arc to the trajectory. Ellen hits the wall a couple of times, but when she finally hits the board a couple fingers shy of the bullseye, Mary shrieks in celebration and pulls Ellen back into a hug, arms looped round her waist and chin tucked over one shoulder.   
  
Suddenly the rounds of beer they were getting turn to shots, and more eager challengers appear out of the woodwork, some stepping up for another try against Mary. Ellen retreats to their table, downing both their whiskeys and feeling the burn creep across her face.   
  
_Girl's good_ , she thinks to herself, watching Mary's charm bracelet flash in the light with every throw.   
  
***   
  
The next morning, Ellen wakes with an anguished groan at the sunlight pouring through the curtains that sets the rhythm in her pounding head into overdrive. She throws an arm over her face, looking out from under the shaded angle of her elbow to see Mary on the other side of the bed. Mary looks fresh as a daisy, sitting up and sipping coffee from a styrofoam cup while paging through the local paper with a frown on her face.   
  
She glances over at Ellen and her expression brightens. “Morning,” she says. “What do you say to spending an extra day in Bumblefuck? You can sleep in a bit more. I'll pick up some supplies for the road, and maybe later we can practice your darts. I have the sneaking suspicion that you'll be better than I am at scamming the yahoos.”   
  
Ellen groans again and rolls over, pulling the scratchy duvet over her head. “The first part of the plan sounds fine,” she grumbles.   
  
Mary's hand squeezes her shoulder through the blanket, and then the bed shifts. The door closing behind Mary's retreating footsteps is the last thing Ellen hears right before she falls asleep again.   
  
***   
  
When Ellen wakes up the second time, it's past noon, and she tries to figure out how long it's been since Mary left.  _Probably only a couple of hours,_  she thinks. She takes a long shower, enjoying the luxury of as much hot water as she can stand until the pipes groan and a momentary burst of cold brings it to an end.   
  
She changes into the last of her clean clothes, wondering if she has enough time to do a quick laundry run before Mary comes back.   
  
“What the hell,” she says to herself. “We've got all day.” She scrawls a quick note and leaves it by the phone, bringing the newspaper with her to read as her stuff gets clean.   
  
The newspaper has an article torn out of it, a short one towards the back. Ellen shrugs and reads around the gap until the dryer buzzes.   
  
***   
  
When she gets back to the motel, Mary isn't there. The note is still on the nightstand, untouched as far as Ellen can tell. She frowns a little and heads back out, towards the front office.   
  
There's an old woman behind the desk; she’s the same one who checked them in last night. She looks like she hasn't moved in  _years._ “Have you seen my friend?” Ellen asks. “Blonde girl, little taller than I am, about the same age?”   
  
“I remember,” the lady says, nodding. “She took off this morning, but I haven't seen her since.”   
  
“Did she leave a note, or...?”   
  
“No, I just spotted her through the curtains, there. She was walking away from town.” The woman tsks through her teeth. “You young ladies shouldn't be going anywhere alone, you know.”   
  
Ellen suppresses an eyeroll, only because she's getting worried.  _Why would Mary be walking away from town?_  she thinks. Aloud, Ellen replies, “I'm sure she's fine. She can take care of herself,” desperately hoping it's true.   
  
She asks the waitresses at the nearest restaurant if they've seen Mary. “Yeah, she was in here this morning. Got breakfast and a large coffee to go,” one of them answers. “Caught some flack from a regular for taking his money last night.” The waitress laughs. “Not like he didn't deserve it. He tips for shit.”   
  
Ellen smiles halfheartedly at this, thanks the waitress, and leaves. She steals a newspaper from one of the booths on her way out.   
  
The article Mary had torn out has a few sentences beneath its headline: “Local Lovers' Death Ruled Suicide Pact.” There are two names, a mention of the community's grief, and a location.   
  
Apparently, the place is the local 'haunted' house.   
  
Ellen narrow her eyes.   
  
“Huh,” she says as she stares down at the paper, standing right in the middle of the sidewalk in front of the door.   
  
_You wouldn't believe me if I told you,_  Mary had said.   
  
_Seeing's believing,_  Ellen thinks grimly, and tears out the article, tossing the paper in the nearest trash bin.   
  
***   
  
Ellen packs up the Corvair and drives over despite the fact that it's less than a mile and a half away. It feels like she's already wasted enough time, even though she's got enough nervous energy in her to run the distance nearly as fast as she can drive it.   
  
When she pulls up, she sees that the boards and police tape have been pried away from the front door.   
  
_Fuck,_  she thinks, noticing a familiar truck in the driveway. It had been parked in front of the bar last night.  _Mary's got a thing for ghost stories, and one of her marks has followed her into a secluded building for some payback._  Ellen pulls her folding knife from the glove compartment and just sits in her car for a minute, taking deep breaths until her hands stop shaking.   
  
There's a scream from the second floor. It's not Mary.   
  
It's a man's voice.   
  
_Shit, shit, shit!_  Ellen thinks, launching out of the car at top speed. She vaults up the steps in twos, heart in her throat. As soon as she gets out of the sunlight, the air turns cold, and the doorknob burns like ice under her hand.   
  
“Mary?” she shouts at the top of her lungs. “ _Mary!_  Hello?” Her breath hangs in white clouds in the air.   
  
There is a dull, heavy thump upstairs, then footsteps. She sprints to the stairway, knife in hand, and almost gets knocked flat on her ass by Mary, who's wide-eyed and wild-looking, a shotgun in her hands.   
  
“What the hell is-” Ellen starts, but Mary's clutching her shoulder so tight it  _hurts._   
  
“Are you a virgin?” Mary asks insistently.   
  
“Are you fucking  _kidding_  me?” Ellen shoots back.   
  
“If you're not a virgin, we have to get you out of the house right now or-”   
  
And that's when the wall behind Mary  _ripples_  like the surface of a pond and a clawed hand reaches out towards them. Ellen doesn't think; instead she reacts by knocking Mary away to one side, slashing out with the knife. It doesn't touch a thing, just slices through the apparition, but the hand stops an inch from Ellen's face and withdraws back into the wallpaper.    
  
It leaves a dark stain in its wake, like water damage, but even that fades after a moment.   
  
“Huh,” Mary says from the floor at Ellen's feet. “How the heck are  _you_  still a virgin?”   
  
Ellen pushes her hair out of her face and offers Mary a hand up. “Too busy working in a library, I guess. Now will you explain to me what in  _hell_  just happened?”   
  
“It's a haunting, obviously,” Mary responds, re-loading her shotgun with shells from her pocket. “Guy built this house for his wife, but she died giving birth to their daughter before it was done. He got all protective of his baby girl, raised her like Rapunzel in the attic, like ya do when you're a grief-stricken Victorian widower.... Long story short, it didn't work, and when he found out she'd gotten her cherry popped without getting hitched first, he went off the deep end. Shot his daughter and her boyfriend, then hung himself after.”   
  
“So...”   
  
“He haunts this place. Kills anybody who isn't either married or pure as the driven snow.”   
  
“And you know this how?”   
  
Mary shoots her a sharp glance, looking like a completely different person than the laughing girl who'd toppled into Ellen's life and car the day before. “Family business. And I know my way around a library, too.” She pulls a can of lighter fluid and a pack of matches from the hotel from her knapsack, handing them to Ellen and then cocking the gun. “Come on. We've got to find his bones and burn them. Let's try the backyard; there's probably a family plot or something, if we're lucky.”   
  
Ellen follows behind, a thousand questions swirling in her mind. “Where's the guy?”   
  
“What guy?”   
  
“The guy from last night. His truck...”   
  
“Oh.  _Him._  He's upstairs. Chased me in here with his gun looking to get his money back. You...  _really_  don't want to know what happened next.”   
  
Ellen winces. She's read enough ghost stories.   
  
***   
  
It's dusk by the time they find the grave, a small cracked square of marble overgrown with weeds. Ellen pulls decades of detritus from the ground while Mary gets a rusted shovel from a weathered, crooked gardening shed that looks like it's going to fall over any minute. While Ellen keeps watch with the shotgun, Mary digs, efficient and easy as if she's done this all her life.   
  
Watching Mary, her toned muscles moving under tanned skin, Ellen can believe it.   
  
The ghost of Old Man Whoever shows up just as the shovel thunks against something that isn't dirt. He appears in a swirl of rotting leaves, his hollow eyes burning with unearthly rage, and Ellen fires both barrels into his gut right before a roaring flame licks at her back.   
  
The column of leaves catches fire, sending sparks up into the darkening sky. The last thing the ghost does is open his jaw and let loose a hateful screech that echoes in Ellen's ears long after the ash drifts to the ground.   
  
She turns to look down at Mary, who's soot-smudged and giving her an admiring smile.   
  
“Family business, huh?” Ellen asks.   
  
“Yup.”   
  
“Buy me dinner for saving your life, and tell me all about it.” For the second time in a day, she helps Mary to her feet, and they head back to the Corvair.   
  
***   
  
Mary doesn't get to tell her anything that night. The restaurant's closed, so they go back to the bar and eat greasy food, drinking whatever gets put on someone else’s tab. They clean out the pockets of the patrons with a trick so simple it's a wonder they get away with it: Mary offers last night's losers double their money if they take another game with one of them, determined by a coin toss. They take the deal, thinking they have a fifty-fifty chance of getting Ellen, who still doesn't hit the board most throws.   
  
Mary has a trick coin, of course. She uses it three times out of five, and the locals don't suspect a thing.   
  
They leave the bar, rich as thieves (which they kind of are), and drunk as skunks. They stagger their way back to the motel, leaning on each other to stay upright.   
  
Ellen has no idea how they work the door key without making fools of themselves, but they do, trying to muffle their giggles and shush each other as they fumble for the lights. Ellen toes off her sneakers and collapses onto the bed, and Mary makes her way to the bathroom.   
  
When she comes out, her cutoffs are still unbuttoned, and she pulls her shirt off before falling onto the bed. Ellen tries not to stare.   
  
“Oh my God, I'm drunker than I've ever been,” Ellen says to the ceiling, “and I still don't believe everything that I saw today. It happened, right? I mean,  _really?_ ”   
  
“Yuuuup,” Mary drawls. “Explanations tomorrow. Sleep now.”   
  
“'kay,” Ellen says, and pulls the corner of the duvet up, rolling closer to Mary to get it over both of them.   
  
They fall asleep like that, curled together like kittens.   
  
***   
  
Either Ellen's learning to hold her liquor, or they've overslept. She slits her eyes open against the light and squints at the clock.   
  
It's well past check-out. They'll have to pay for another day.   
  
She smiles, thinking of the truly staggering amount of money they won last night and tucks herself closer to Mary. She's asleep again in minutes, the smell of smoke and Mary's shampoo filling her lungs.   
  
***   
  
She wakes again to find Mary looking at her, brow furrowed in thought.   
  
“Explain to me again,” Mary says, her voice quiet, “how someone like you managed to stay a virgin?”   
  
Ellen smiles sleepily. “Girls don't count, I guess,” she says, feeling reckless.   
  
“Oh,” is all Mary says before Ellen pulls her down and kisses her gently, carefully. Mary pulls away and gives her another bright grin. “Not to stuffy Victorian ghosts, at least,” Mary says, and she rolls them both over until they're tangled up in the covers and each other.   
  
They don't leave town for another day, but neither do they go to the bar again that night.   
  
They have enough money.   
  
***   
  
“You never did tell me about the family business,” Ellen says, while resting her head on Mary's soft stomach. She toys with the charms on Mary's bracelet, cataloguing each symbol against lore she’s read but never before believed.   
  
“What do you need to know? Things most people think are fake aren't, and some of us make sure the stories go back to being stories.”   
  
“So, vampires?”   
  
“Yup.”   
  
“Werewolves?”   
  
“Mmm-hmm.”   
  
“Fairies?”   
  
“I know a guy,” Mary says, “He says they're dicks.”   
  
Ellen laughs. “Jesus, I feel like I just fell down the rabbit hole.”   
  
Mary tangles one hand in Ellen's hair and tugs gently. “You're handling it well.”   
  
“I spent my whole life in a small town learning about the rest of the world by reading books,” Ellen points out. “I've never seen the Grand Canyon either, but I believe it's there. You're just helping me re-sort some of that stuff in my head from fiction to non-fiction.”   
  
“Huh.”   
  
***   
  
They settle the room bill and drive out of town the next morning, Mary kicking off her boots so that she can stretch her feet out on the dash.   
  
“Get footprints on the windshield and I'll throw you out of this car,” Ellen warns.   
  
Mary tips her head up from its position on Ellen's shoulder and sticks her tongue out. “All right,  _Mom,_ ” she says teasingly.   
  
“God, don't call me that. I don't even want to  _think_  about having kids.”   
  
Mary turns her face away to look out the window. “Me either. I don't mind the family business, but my dad... he thinks I should find a nice hunter and pop out the next generation like my uterus is prime real estate for the Campbell franchise.”   
  
Ellen wrinkles her nose.   
  
***   
  
Between Nebraska and Illinois, Ellen learns several things. First, her dart-playing improves enough that she wins more games than she loses, though not by much. “That's good,” Mary says approvingly. “Gives the marks the impression that they can beat you. I have to hold back most of the time to fake 'em out. They bet more money that way.”   
  
Her aim with a gun is much better. They go to forested areas out in the middle of nowhere and practice with empty Coke bottles. Mary teaches her how to sharpen a knife and pack shotgun shells with salt. “I keep some with me even if I can't carry a gun everywhere. Easy enough to find one in a farmer's truck or something, out here in farm country. They need them to protect their livestock. I put ‘em back when I'm done.” She also teaches Ellen how to pick locks in order to break into cars and abandoned graveyards when the walls are too tall to climb.   
  
Ellen doesn't know what's going to happen when they hit Chicago. She doesn't really care. Smith seems like a long way off, distance and reality distorted between here and there. This is what she’d hoped for when she saw the car and three months of freedom on the calendar, although the particulars were beyond her imagining at the time.   
  
She's learning to like the practical better than the theory, despite the callouses and small injuries she’s getting in the process. She'll probably fail half her tests now that she knows the truth behind the stories. Salt lines, dead man's blood, and exorcisms will probably be different in her textbooks than what she's learned from Mary.   
  
“I could... not go to Smith,” she says one day after they're done with target practice and heading back to the latest in a series of cheap roadside lodgings. “You don't have to go back to your folks. Sounds like all that's standing between you and independence is a good partner.”   
  
Mary gives her a sidelong look from the passenger's seat. “Ellen... We met two weeks ago. I don't want you to give up your future, all your plans...”   
  
“I made those plans never having seen anything that wasn't within a fifty mile radius of home. College seemed like the most adventure a girl like me could hope for.”   
  
Mary rolls her eyes elaborately. “Please don't call this an adventure. It's dirty, grimy, awful work.”   
  
Ellen smiles, and adds, “...but someone's gotta do it.”   
  
“Oh, shut up.”   
  
***   
  
Ellen also learns this: Mary likes wearing white but hates doing laundry, so Ellen has to bleach out the bloodstains after every hunt.    
  
And this: Mary's never done anything other than kiss another girl, but she's a quick study and knows how to bluff when she really wants something. Apparently, she  _really_  wants to find out how thin the walls are at each new motel and how loud Ellen can get.   
  
And: Mary  _loves_  cars but can't change a flat tire.   
  
And this, too: Mary knows all the lyrics to every Beatles song and will sing at the top of her lungs in the car even when they're stuck in traffic.   
  
Ellen learns to control her blushing.   
  
***   
  
They're just finishing lunch at a rest stop outside Decatur, Illinois when a man approaches them.    
  
They... haven't really been discreet, their ankles tangling under the picnic bench while they’ve giggled at each other each time their elbows bump, but neither have they been obvious. They haven't kissed, or touched each other in too-familiar ways. Nothing  _overt._   
  
Still, his face is disapproving as he walks up to them. He’s old enough to be their grandfather, his snowy white hair contrasting with his dark skin. His frown accentuates the deep creases around his narrowed eyes.   
  
“You have strayed from your path,” he intones in a deep voice. “You are not following God's Plan.”   
  
Alarmed, Ellen glances around to see if there are any onlookers, but they’re alone. There isn’t a car in sight besides the Corvair, and she wonders how he arrived.   
  
Mary, of course, flips him the bird. “Go to hell, old man. We're not interested in-”   
  
He moves so fast that Ellen doesn’t even see him move, but he's reaching out to them with both hands outstretched and then-   
  
everything goes white.   
  
***   
  
Uriel makes the necessary changes.   
  
***   
  
The diner is small and interchangeable with any other she's seen in the last few weeks, with red-checked tablecloths. The counter looks like it had been put down in the forties, its pattern wiped away to white by decades of routine cleaning. Still, it's bright and well-kept, and its bathrooms aren't too cramped, so she can pull out her shampoo and washcloth and get the worst of the grime off without knocking her elbows against the walls. When she's done, she scrapes her damp hair back into a ponytail and heads out to grab a table.   
  
She eats alone, having only a half sandwich and a cup of soup so that she can stretch out her budget as long as possible. When she heads back out to the Corvair, she finds a young man staring at it. He seems about her age, tall and dishwater-blonde, and there’s a quiet self-assurance to his stance that soothes her immediate wary instincts.    
  
“I like your car,” he says with a pleasant smile.    
  
“Thanks,” she says.   
  
“My name’s Bill. I don't mean to sound like a creep, but would you mind giving me a ride? My truck broke down for good a couple of towns back, and I've got money for gas if you need it...”   
  
Later, Ellen won't be able to tell you why, but she ends up saying yes.   
  
***   
  
“And that was it,” Ellen said. She'd set her glass down on the bar, and Bobby had refilled it without a word. “I never did make it to college.”   
  
  
\- END -


End file.
